Recruitment: from slavery to digitalisation

October 28th, 2019 | Industry News

At Recruit So Simple we’re rarely surprised by anything we see in the recruitment industry, but every so often we come across a story that completely blows our minds. And this is one of those: The Global Slavery Index says that Malaysia has 212,000 slaves – and pretty well all of them are domestic workers. Recruitment in Malaysia is complex: ‘formal’ workers can be forced to pay up to a month’s salary to the recruitment consultancy that gets them a job, but ‘informal’ workers, such as cooks, cleaners, nannies, gardeners and chauffeurs, often travelling from the Philippines, can be charged such high fees that they are essential trapped forever in low paying jobs that never allow them to clear their recruitment debt. It’s a staggering and terrible statistic and while we do occasionally hear people complain about recruitment agencies in the UK, we’re a million miles away from that kind of horror story.

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Brexit pangs and LinkedIn pledges

October 14th, 2019 | Industry News

Two major recruiting companies have posted results that show the negative impact of Brexit uncertainty on recruitment in the UK. Applicant tracking system UK wide information shows that many firms have put hiring on hold. The supposed deadline 31 October, bad as it was for UK recruiters, may not even end the confusion as the Benn Act requires the Prime Minister to ask for a further delay by 19 October if a deal isn’t achieved at the summit on 17 October. That would mean pushing the deadline back to 31 January 2020… and more misgivings for UK recruiters. With profit declines being reported by big recruiters, online recruitment software needs to contend with a hiring market that is unpredictable, cautious and prone to reversing decisions based on current events. Recruitment agency software has to move fast to align a largely static recruitment pool with the wavering positions being taken by many businesses. The ripples spread far from the UK, with companies from Brazil to Uruguay to Portugal refocusing their energy from the UK as a potential market to more predictable new territories. As a result, web-based recruitment software has the edge, as it permits recruiters to find the widest possible circles of talent, and to craft opportunities that appeal to candidates who might have subtle reasons to seek work in the UK.

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What recruiters can learn from Homeland Security

October 2nd, 2019 | Industry News

It’s not every day that we get an insight into the hiring algorithms used by government organisations, but just this week, the US Homeland Security Department’s Chief Information Officer John Zangardi gave away some of their recent system designs. As all SAAS recruitment agencies know, the algorithms that shape decisions are a vital component of web-based recruitment software, so when Homeland Security say they are adopting ‘creative new hiring practices’ people pay attention.

What it boils down to is that they are accepting people without computer science backgrounds for their cyber workforces. It doesn’t sound that radical, does it?

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Google search, payroll fraud and financial adviser recruitment

September 25th, 2019 | Industry News

As 23 European job search sites write to the European Competition Commissioner complaining that Google’s online recruitment tool is ‘a lever to dominate yet another online industry’ other online recruiters are adjusting their web-based recruitment software to cope with the new Google offering. The complaint is that Google’s job adverts appear above the websites of other search companies and, the signatories claim, on mobiles, the Google Jobs box fills the entire screen, reducing click-throughs to other competitor sites. Google disputes all the claims.

Fighting fraud with online recruitment software

Recruitment software should have the capacity to help recruitment consultancies protect themselves against fraud and the best recruitment software for agencies is robust enough to recognise patterns that could indicate fraudulent behaviour.

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Avoiding the recruitment mistakes that cost big businesses plenty

August 30th, 2019 | Industry News

Recruitment agencies that make use of SaaS solutions have a real advantage when it comes to avoiding the kind of errors that huge businesses and sectors are prone to falling into.

Recruiting for oil and gas – and where it goes wrong

Once there was a well-worn groove from science and engineering departments to the oil and gas industry. But since 2014, this resource has slowed, partly because the price of oil has dropped and graduate recruitment was cut by around 50%. Although there has been a turnaround in the industry, recruitment hasn’t benefitted. In fact, it’s reported that 90% of executives in the oil and gas sector say skill shortages are damaging productivity. Even the best recruitment CRM struggles to find candidates to fill the shortages in this sector… bad press is definitely one reason, like tobacco and armaments, oil and gas has become a field that can turn off bright graduates, but unconscious recruitment bias has played a part too. Adverts that use language like ‘challenging position’ or ‘great benefits for candidates willing to accept adverse working conditions’ may sound honest, but in fact they read like code for ‘men only need apply’.

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Successful recruiting in international markets

August 16th, 2019 | Industry News

Recruitment software used to be a blunt tool that recorded facts and kept track of payments. Today it’s a sophisticated contribution to an increasingly challenging endeavour – finding the right candidate in challenging marketplaces. SAAS recruitment agencies are ahead of the game, relying on online recruitment software that can handle complexities like Brexit and the Deutsche Bank layoffs to provide the best possible service to job seekers and clients.

Brexit and Deutsche Bank (DB)

For big international recruiters finding that activity in Europe is essential to offset the slowdown in the UK market, the balancing act has just become more tricky. Even the best recruitment CRM can’t disguise the fact that net fee incomes from UK recruitment are falling – big agencies are posting between 4-8% drops this quarter, small agencies may be feeling it even more. This makes Deutsche Bank’s 18,000 job reduction a major impact on an already fragile market.

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Good news for the UK hiring economy and how to find the perfect recruitment consultancy

July 26th, 2019 | Industry News

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation reports that UK employers felt 4% more confident about making hiring decisions in the last quarter. Confidence in the economy has also risen by around 3%, although it’s still very low. Demand for temporary agency workers is forecast to increase by 2% this quarter, just as it did in the previous one, but it’s still 13% lower than 12 months ago.

On the negative side, four out of five employers say they have little surplus capacity and 27% say they have no extra capacity at all. This means that companies are tightly stretched and illness or other absence problems are likely to increase stress on the rest of the employees. Over 90% are expected to use a recruitment consultancy in the 12 months ahead and they say they are looking for either geographical expertise or sector experience when selecting a partner agency.

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Recruiters as retainers – a new paradigm in uncertain times

July 16th, 2019 | Industry News

The traditional view of recruiters is that retention is their enemy. Today’s employment uncertainty means that retention has become a key issue, not just for companies hiring staff but for recruiters trying to fill vacancies. A survey has shown that the number of people offered permanent jobs via recruitment agencies fell for the fourth month in a row in June. While temporary hiring rose slightly, the first six months of 2019 have been the slowest growth period since 2013. Employers are struggling, but aren’t necessarily turning to recruitment agencies because of this old, and today profoundly out-of-date image as the spivs of the hiring world.

Recruiting software, applied with sophistication, can not only improve recruitment but work towards retention. For a new hire to stay, three factors have to be considered:

• Are they right for the job?
• Are they motivated?
• Are they adequately rewarded?

Recruitment CRM software can deliver responses to the second two questions BEFORE the candidate is hired. How?

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Innovation in recruitment – a software perspective

June 24th, 2019 | Industry News

Everything moves faster these days. Recruitment is no different, but systems don’t always keep pace. We’ve chosen a case study to show how the best recruitment CRM actively speeds up recruitment and gives agencies the lead in effective recruitment.

How to recruit in FinTech

A recent Government report into the UK FinTech market reveals that this sector produces £6.6B per annum, 42% of personnel are from overseas and women make up a third of the total workforce. In another study 78% of vacancies fell into five categories: software design and engineering, operations, data and analytics, sales and marketing and less than 10% of those vacancies were in the latter two areas, so this is a tech heavy recruitment field.

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Recruitment costs and growing your own talent

June 11th, 2019 | Industry News

According to HR Director, a standard recruitment process can cost up to £11,000 and soak up around 27 days. That’s a substantial increase in both cost and time over five years ago. It’s no surprise to recruitment professionals with Brexit, economic uncertainty established talent gaps particularly in STEM sectors all contributing to the difficulty of finding, and retaining, the right people.

Limitations in the traditional ‘recruitment campaign’ include the process of the funnel which limits both speed and access to ideal candidates by taking a linear approach to hiring. New models which have a ‘wheel’ of recruitment change recruiting from a linear to a non-linear process but engaging all potential candidates – via recruitment software – in a process that puts them, rather than the job, at the centre of a web of connections. Recruitment agency software can be used to nurture relationships, staying in touch with each individual and establishing a long-term relationship via an applicant tracking system, UK-wide and able to recognise the vital moments when talent in the network can be rapidly recruited into appropriate positions.

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